Banned Bodies, Spurned Speech: Butler, Kristeva and the location of a 'maternal language' Erin Wunker Cet article propose de revenir sur la critique que fait Butler de Kristeva, notamment sur la thiorie du langage poitique. Butler misinterpr2te la thiorie de Kristeva et, ce faisant, mine son propre argument selon lequel le genre est perjormatiJ: En (re)venant ir Butler et en me penchant sur Kristeva, j'abom'e ensuite le discoursfiministe qui se demande comment traduire la thiorie en pratique: comment le langage poitique de Kristeva peut-il fonctionner dans le sens d'un#minisme d'avenir? Relue du point de vue de Kristeva, la thiorie de la perjormativiti du genre de Butlerpeut-elle &irere'habilite'e? Comment un lien entre le langage poitique de Kristeva et la perjormance de butler part-il dicentrer de faqon productive la structure du pouvoir partriarcal hitirosexualise'? Judith Butler has suggested that gender is a "cultural configuration" (Gender Trouble 190). She posits that gender categories are predicated on the grounds of exclusion, and what is at stake is the power of identity. I refer, here, to Butler's preceding remarks wherein she states that "the foundationalist reasoning of iden- tity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken" (181). She maintains, throughout her text, that in the present socio-cultural "con- figuration" a subject must be read as such-be culturally identifiable-in order to begin to enact political change. The thrust of Butler's argument is, in short, that gender is culturally prescribed to a subject (in order to render that subject identifiable), however, Butler takes great pains to demonstrate that gender is an arbitrary construction and that, as there are only two "culturally identifiable" genders, this process is inherently exclusionary. She maintains, moreover, that systematically categorizing gender works to undermine the subversive potential of individualistic identity. I will speak to this last point throughout the course of the paper. If power-moreover heterosexualized patriarchal power-is struc- tured to exclude a majority of the population, then it follows that at the very least there should exist, within the excluded majority, a desire to subvert that power. It is curious, then, that Butler's critique of Julia Kristeva's "body politics" hinge on what Butler sees as an impossible and inadequate politics of subversion (102). Kristeva, in her work on subject-formation, relies on the multiple meanings available in language (what she calls poetic language) as a means by which to subvert the patriarchal law of power. Poetic language, for Kristeva, offers a way to reconnect with the 'maternal body'-a 'body' that psychoanalysis maintains every subject must turn from in order to enter into the socio-symbolic order. One could make the argument that 'figure' or 'specter' could work interchangeably 148 . Tessera with 'body,' however I choose to use 'body' deliberately as I read Kristeva as gesturing toward both the physical maternal body as well as the psychoanalytic concept of the Mother. Butler, herself, is engaged in an argument that positions the gendered body as performative. She claims that any categorization of gen- dered bodies is always a practice of exclusion (7). Yet, Butler resists Kristeva's subject-theories. She posits that Kristeva "offers us a strategy of subversion that can never become a sustained political practice" (103). This paper proposes to perform a return to Butler's critique of Kristeva, particularly her critique of Kris- teva's theory of poetic language. I suggest that Butler fundamentally misinter- prets Kristeva's subject-theory, and in doing so destabilizes her own pertinent argument that gender is performance. I will, in my (re)turn to Butler and my turn to Kristeva, enter into the feminist discourse that asks how theory can be trans- lated into practice: I will ask how Kristeva's poetic language works toward a feminism of the future. Furthermore, when re-read through the same Kristeva she rejects, I will question whether Butler's performative theory of gender may be rehabilitated. The paper will close by attempting to postulate a link between Kris- teva's poetic language and Butler's theory of performance that may locate a point at which to begin to practically de-center the heterosexualized patriarchal power structure. Butler opens Gender Trouble with an ideological crux that has plagued the feminist movement since its inception. She underscores that the relationship between feminist discourse and political action is contentious: the task of feminist theory has been to formulate a language that "fully or adequately represents women" in order for women to become a visible group within politics (4). T h e problem, however, is at the very root of representation: for a language to adequately represent a group, that group must be visible (4). In short, the task of feminist theory is to create a language that would, paradoxically, operate under those same cultural codes it wishes to expose and to change. The term "women" is necessary in so far as it indicates the group for whom it wishes to create political action, however, the very term glosses over the myriads of differences between women. Citing Michel Foucault, Butler further reveals the complexity of the feminist task. She notes, "Foucault points out that the juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent" (4). Thus the "subject" of feminism, the one(s) on whose behalf femi- nism acts, is theoretically produced by the "very political system that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation" (4). Feminist theory must proceed critically, for power (juridical power in Butler's terms), has a dual function: it both produces subjects-before-the-law, and simultaneously conceals its production (5). The task for feminist theory, as Butler sees it, is not only to question how women may best be represented (made visible) in the political and linguistic realms, but also to come to an understanding of "how the category of 'woman,' the subject of femi- nism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought" (5). To be a subject-before-the-law is to stand before the Law and wait to be recognized, wait to be named. To be subject to and of the law is to be forced to wait in the periphery. Moreover, to wait to be made visible and Banned Bodies, Spurned Speech... 149 wait to be named both disempowers the subject, and creates a false (as well as limiting) concept of a single identity. The power of the Law rests in the con- ception that to be recognized by the Law is to be recognized as a subject. As Butler notes, the language available for political and theoretical action is incredibly limiting: the "women" feminist theory works for are, by the single term "women," displaced from their own specificity (6). While women are cer- tainly not all alike, feminist theory has taken up the linguistic tools available to make visible the people it works to help. Thus the disparity between Western women, Third World women, European women, Asian women, women of colour, poor women, wealthy women, middle class women, single mothers, women of various sexualities is bound up in a single word: 'women.' Butler's position is clear. She suggests that, "the presumed universality and unity of the subject of feminism is effectively undermined by the constraints of the representational dis- course in which it functions" (7). She posits, moreover, that the insistence-and I would suggest the perceived necessity-of maintaining the universal subject of feminism has resulted in "multiple refusals to accept the category" (7). A further complication for feminist theory arises when one begins to inves- tigate the distinctions between sex and gender (9). While sex has been generally accepted as biologically (and therefore indisputably) determined, gender is the cul- tural (and therefore disputable) inscription that a sexed body is prescribed (10). Gender, unfixed and disputable, should assume the same task assigned to feminist theory: gender should work to reveal the politico-cultural discourse that produces it (l l). Butler suggests that, "when the relevant 'culture' that 'constructs' gender is understood in terms of such a law or set of laws, then it seems that gender is deter- mined and fixed as it was under the biology-is-destiny formulation. In such a case, not biology, but culture, becomes destiny" (12). In the same way that a group is made visible through its very designation as a group, bodies become culturally intelligible through being marked as one gender or another (13). The socio-politi- CO-culturalrealm makes meaning through language, thus, language becomes the prime 'maker' of sexed, gendered bodies. Thus, a simultaneous critical discourse must be taken up on the constitutive structure of language (13). Feminist theory must determine what it means to be a subject in and of language. Within a discourse, which has figured women as either a lack,' or an Other, Butler surmises that women also lack subjective agency. The constructed concept of "Being" is at the root of this complex discourse: It was grammar (the structure of the subject and the predicate) that inspired Descartes' certainty that "I" is the subject of "think," whereas it is rather the thoughts that come to "me": at the bottom, faith in grammar simply conveys the will to be the "cause" of one's thoughts. The subject, the self, the individual, are just so many false concepts, since they transform into sub- stances fictitious unities having at the start only a linguistic reality. (Haar 18) 150 . Tessera The subject of any discourse is so much fiction: language creates the misconcep- tion of a single, fixed identity and wholeness of being.